The Most Relaxing Mode Of Transportation
Perhaps it’s because I’m from America – and not New York or Chicago, about the only cities in the USA where people use public transportation on a daily basis – but I love riding trains when traveling.
There’s something so, well, European about it.
I would not exactly call it romantic, or describe it as exhilarating, but it’s cool.
I’m so relaxed when I’m on trains. I’m not fighting traffic in a car. I’m not being patted down by TSA, standing in long lines everywhere and behind herded onto a flight in “Zone B” like at an airport.
Rather, I just cruise into a station, stroll up to a train and step on board.
The last time I got back from Switzerland, where I was riding trains and trams all over the place (this is easy to do in Switzerland; you can cover practically the entire country in three to four hours), I was determined to avoid driving a car here in Los Angeles.
This is, as you might expect, nearly impossible. The bizarre Metro system is difficult to understand even if you somewhat understand it. Any city with a Metro system that has its trains stop a mile from the airport needs some serious evaluation of its transportation system.
Then again, that’s America in general. While Europeans use trains to travel within their country and from country to country on a daily basis, it’s unheard of here in the States. The schedules, the prices, the distances and they inability to even get to destinations makes it nearly impossible to travel by train in the USA.
I would love to take a train from here in Los Angeles to Las Vegas, or up to Carmel/Monterey/San Francisco on occasion. But there’s no train to Vegas – this should be a no-brainer with all the customers L.A. provides to Vegas – and you should see all the controversies, cost overruns and resistance regarding a high-speed train attempting to being built to San Francisco.
Currently, you can still do the latter, but it’s takes something like 10 hours. I know I looked into it to Monterey one time and eventually threw up my hands and said “heck, I’ll just drive!”
I did take the train to San Diego from Los Angeles one time, and immensely enjoyed it. I snuck on some rum, poured it in a soda and sat back as the train rolled along the Southern California coastline.
The problem with that is it took as long to get to the train station as it did to San Diego (2 hours for each) so it’s not practical on a regular basis.
But oh, man, how great it would be to skip driving and going to airports to travel by train here in America.
I guess, tho, I’ll just have to go back to Europe. And in particular to Switzerland.
Cheers!
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